“She’s running out of time!” I roar. “Every day she spends here, every day she doesn’t remember, the Hollow Order digs in deeper.” I pull at my own hair until my skull burns, hoping the sharp pain will bring me an answer. “She’s not ready.”
She finally closes her book, meeting my eyes. “She’s healing. It takes time.”
“We don’t have time! You’ve felt it too — I know you have. If she doesn’t wake up, doesn’t remember–”
Betsy cuts me off, her voice gentle. “Then she stays Casie.”
It cuts to the bone. My body stiffens, hands curling into fists that I can’t use.
“No,” I spit. “She’s Ember. She’s always been Ember. She’s my–”
“She’sherself,” Betsy says, not unkindly. “Casie, Ember… Ash,” she shoots me a knowing look. “Whatever name she carries, she’s a girl with a broken heart and too many scars. Push her too hard, Flint, and she’ll break all over again.”
I exhale sharply, running a hand over my face and turning away. Hearing my worst fears spoken out loud has a cold feeling settling in the pit of my stomach.
“I can’t lose her,” I manage. “Not to war. Not to forgetting.” I swallow hard. “I can’t lose her again, Betsy. I just can’t.”
The silence is heavy. I can feel Betsy studying me and the moment drags on and on. She sighs, slides off her stool, and crosses to where I stand. She draws me over to one of the sofas and gestures for me to sit next to her. I do as she asks, but brace my elbows on my knees, dropping my face into my hands.
“The memories aren’t gone, Flint. They’re locked away so she could survive the trauma of tapping into the Wound. You know that. I know you want to dig them up with brute strength, but some things need a more gentle approach.”
“I know that Betsy. But I also know the time we have left for that finesse is shrinking rapidly. What happens to home if she’s Casie? What happens to her?”
“Then she lives here, with Annemarie and me, until her mortal life expires.”
She says it so matter-of-factly that I feel terror wrap around the base of my spine. She’s not supposed to havea mortal life. She’s supposed to have a life that spans the centuries. With me. In Goira.
“No.”
She scoffs. “The choice is hardly yours, boy.” Her tone reminds me to tread carefully. Her voice softens, as if in apology. “I love her, too.”
“Can’t you just write her back to normal?” I whine, even though I know the answer.
“You know I can’t. Even my powers have limits.” She sighs. I can feel her frustration even without using my own powers. “If it were that easy, we would have been home a long time ago.”
“Then tell me how. Tell me what I can do.”
Betsy seems to think, her gaze unfocused on something in the distance only she can see. “She needs to feel what she felt before. Not the battle, not the Wound. The parts of herself she trusted most. Her joy. Her magick.” She pauses. “Her love.”
I swallow hard. “Her love for me?” I think back to the wave of love I felt flooding through the link last night.
Betsy smiles, but cuffs the back of my head. “Don’t be thick. She never stopped. It’s still there. So is her magick. That’s what you need to awaken. The rest will come in time.”
I think back to that moment last night, that glow of silver in her eyes. “I think it might be happening already.” I say slowly.
“Do tell.”
“There was a moment last night,” I begin, fighting the urge to squirm. “Her eyes changed, just for a moment, like they do when she channels.”
Betsy seems to consider. “What were the circumstances?”
No. Nope. I don’t fucking think so.
“It’s… private.”
“I see.” Oh, this silence is grossly uncomfortable. “Is that why I found a belt and a bra in the stacks this morning?”
I’m more than twice her size and somehow she makes me feel like a little boy caught with my hand in the cookie jar. I feel my face heating and refuse to meet her gaze.
